


Boulin Rouge

by lexlee20



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Gen, Hatoful birdfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 05:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexlee20/pseuds/lexlee20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mashup crackfic, inspired by a hatofulkink comment about a line in EmmyKay's "A Weakness in the Family."</p>
<p>
  <i>"Never date a pigeon who dresses in drag! It always ends bad!"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Boulin: a pigeonhole for accommodating a mated pair of birds in a dovecote.

"Never date a pigeon who dresses in drag! It always ends bad!"

Hiyoko should have listened to those words, and all the warnings she was given before and after she came to St. Pigeonation's. She first entered this school with dreams of rising from her humble hunter-gatherer origins to become a bohemian revolutionary. She yearned to live out the ideals of truth, beauty, freedom, and above all else, love.

Yet she had never been in love. Until the fateful day when she was unpacking in her dormitory room, and suddenly a hallucinating Filipino bird crashed through her window.

He was smaller than even the other avian students, but he had the strength of madness. He'd flown straight into a half-open sack of her clothing, and now he popped back up with a bra draped over his head and covering one eye. "Aaah! I have been struck blind! Blinded by the shining steel breastplate of an avenging Amazon apostle!" he screamed, and flailed wildly until she caught him and untangled the elastic straps from his neck.

The dove's own chest had a bright red stain, as if he'd been attempting his own Amazonian mastectomy. Hiyoko cringed, and her shock let him break free again to ricochet around the walls counterclockwise. "Hey, come back here! Don't you dare bleed on my school uniforms!"

"It is a sign! I cannot escape the cruel fate of wearing women's clothing, unless I can reverse destiny by circling this House of Hippolyta in the opposite direction from the earth's ever-turning axis! This... this Palace of Penthesilea! This Abode of Antiope! This..."

A mild, apologetic cough came from the doorway, where a white quail had just stepped in. "Ah, there he is. He is quite lively, isn't he? Don't worry, he's not hurt; that's just the way his plumage looks. He'll wind down, once he gets the caffeine and allusive alliterations out of his system. I really must remind your fellow students not to give him chocolate-covered espresso beans."

Hiyoko forced herself to stop watching the dove's continuing circuits before she got dizzy. "Who is he? And for that matter, who are you?"

"I'm Nanaki Kazuaki. I'll be your homeroom teacher. That's Akag--"

The dove abruptly crashed into the quail, screaming again. "Aaagh! Do not say the forbidden name! I am the Crimson Angel of Judecca, you... you White Poppy of Lethe! I will not succumb to the demon lure of sleep! Never! Can't sleep! Clowns will eat me!" And with another flurry of wings, Hiyoko and the white quail were left alone again.

"Oh dear," Mr. Nanaki said. "I think I'll let his own homeroom teacher catch him. That very lively Luzon dove is another transfer student, like you. I believe he likes to be called Higure Anghel... but he doesn't really respond to anyone. The art teacher expects him to be the next Jackson Parrot... or was that Pollock? ...that doesn't make sense, a pollock is a fish... zzz..."

The quail passed out head-first into another bag of Hiyoko's clothing. It was a good thing she hadn't packed any of her spiked steel breastplates into her luggage, Hiyoko thought with resignation. She poked the quail on the shoulder and he woke up again, shaking panties off his beak. "Oh, I do apologize for my narcoleptic lapse into your, er, lingerie. Though that makes me wonder if you can help both your lively fellow student and myself with a dilemma... his homeroom teacher volunteered him to help me start a new maid café at this year's school festival. Perhaps you could take his place?"

"Maybe," Hiyoko said. "Wait... did you say a new maid café? Was there an old one?"

Nanaki sighed deeply, unless it was just another yawn. "There still is. In previous years, other maid cafés have tried to rise up and supplant it. But it seems nothing can withstand the supremacy of the first and greatest maid café of this school: the Boulin Rouge. And its new star, the dazzling diamond, the peerless pigeon Coolene."


	2. Chapter 2

Ryouta coughed fretfully as the other birds fastened his new maid costume around him. It was so heavy with sequins and paste jewels that he could never fly in it, even without the enormous hinged train of silver peacock feathers that made him look like a wildly exaggerated fantail. He knew that some of the real fantails snarked about it behind his back, but the costume hadn't been his choice. He hadn't chosen anything about this life, but his parents' death had left him in the custody of Dr. Iwamine, the official school sponsor of the maid club.

Many students at St. Pigeonation's only saw the Boulin Rouge for three days a year at the cultural festival. But this height of maidish excellence could only be maintained by intensive training, day after day. Many alumni of the maid club had been professionally scouted in previous years, until Dr. Iwamine decided to band them together and open the Boulin Rouge as a full-time maid café. Officially, it was a venue for scientific investigation of mating and status rituals. Unofficially, it was an underground hotbed of decadence and desire.

Dr. Iwamine came in for a last-minute check of Ryouta's costume. "Yes, I think this will do nicely. Ho ho ho," he chuckled coldly, and handed him a scepter-like feather duster. "Here. When you shake it, glitter and eiderdown will sift out like diamond dust and snow. Keep your feet tightly gripped on the perch at all times. Now, go!" The hatch opened up beneath Ryouta's feet, and his silver perch began to swing downward in a widening spiral arc.

His official entrance wouldn't come for several more minutes, but before then, he had to descend toward the lights. Far below him in the great metal dome, he could see and hear Yuuya's sexy and suave performance: "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?" The other fantails sashayed around him, wafting long bright streamers of ostrich plumes.

Vaguely, Ryouta wondered why the fantails had to tart up their white feathers with dye and colored spangles, while he had to mute his own iridescent grey rock dove plumage with bleach. Just thinking of it made his eyes feel red and watery, and he coughed again as if he could still smell the bleach fumes from this morning. But he had to stop coughing now. His music cue was coming up. It was time to be as icy and irresistable as a snow-clad mountain, as dangerously tempting as a bacon-flavored metal signpost in subzero weather. It was time to be Coolene.

The spotlights converged on him. He spread his wings, and sang.

\---

"So you see," Mr. Nanaki yelled at Hiyoko through the din, "this is what we're up against. Last year, I thought we might have a chance when the Boulin Rouge's previous star graduated-- that Hawaiian goose on the stage, Nene Eggs-in-the-Air-- but now Coolene has stepped right into her place. Here she comes now. Zzz."

Nanaki abruptly passed out. The only thing that saved him from being trampled was that everyone else stopped dancing too, as all of the lights went dark except for the spotlights crossing overhead. The dome was full of upturned faces. Other spectators passed out too. It was glorious.

Hiyoko could feel her own face burning in confusion. _I feel a strange pressure. The pressure of interspecies sapphic lust._ She wished that Anghel was here with her so he could spout out all of the confused poetic longing she needed to express at the sight of Coolene.

"Love is a bird, she needs to fly  
Let all the hurt inside of you die  
You're frozen  
When your heart's not open..."

After the performance, Hiyoko somehow staggered back to her dorm with Mr. Nanaki. She had very little memory of whatever had happened, except for a vague image-- a hallucination?-- of Anghel wearing a costume of fairy wings over his dark green plumage and giving them something to drink. "It's called a Red Bullfinch. Ahahahahahah!!!" Whatever it was, it failed to keep Mr. Nanaki awake, but it kept her sleepless until dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "interspecies sapphic lust" phrase is from Angie Gallant's original Let's Play thread, of course. Coolene's song is "Frozen", previously recorded by Madonna.


	3. Chapter 3

What do you mean, it's closed for molting season?" Hiyoko demanded in anguish. She had attended every performance in this last week before the school term started, and now her life was empty and meaningless.

The sign on the Boulin Rouge's front door was plain for all to see. "That is odd," Mr. Nanaki drowsily agreed. "They often reduce their performing schedule once school starts-- many troupe members are still students, after all-- but a complete shutdown for molting is nearly unprecedented. Normally, they just carry on in gooseflesh. It looks a bit funny, but some audience members actually prefer that. The molting shutdown might be cover for something else, though. I haven't seen that sign since two years ago, when their previous star was suspended from St. Pigeonation's on charges of flamboyant indecency."

"Their previous star? Oh yeah, that Hawaiian goose, Nene Eggs-in-the-Air, right?"

"That's the one. She had a talent for shooting ping-pong balls out of her cloaca, but that act has been banned now and she's terribly bitter about being demoted to the chorus. I can't blame her, really. It must've taken a great deal of practice to perfect those skills... and... zzz."

"But sir!" Hiyoko shook him, causing his molting feathers to fly into the air. "What will I do now? Without Coolene, my life is empty and meaningless! Empty and meaningless, except for despair!!"

"You know," Nanaki said thoughtfully, "if this is an indefinite shutdown, maybe we can lure Coolene into joining our new maid café instead."

\---

The backstage meeting at the Boulin Rouge was quiet and intense. "Our research grants have nearly run out," Dr. Iwamine gravely told them all. "Some of our sponsors chose not to renew them because of the unfortunate notoriety about Nene. Some of them refused to renew them because without Nene's act, our maid café is now empty and meaningless to them, in spite of our long history and proud traditions of pioneering new forms of transgressive performance art that deconstructs patriarchal gender narratives. Or at least that is how our grant applications are usually phrased."

Ryouta pulled another stick-on jewel off his beak, wincing. "So what do we do now?"

"We will develop a new theme and floor show. Two years ago, we were explosively shocking and in-your-face. Sometimes literally, depending on Nene's aim. This past year, we have been sexy and suave, the very spirit of cool sophistication. In this coming new year, perhaps something wildly exotic. Spectacular. Even barbaric."

"Mes amis, I have an idea," Yuuya said, idly preening more dye off his freshly trimmed tailfeathers. "Perhaps two. My stepfather is coming to this country as a chaperone for my little brother, who will join us as a transfer student. They arrive on a Canard ocean liner tomorrow. Monsieur Le Bel-- that is, Philippe Le Bel, duc de Bourgogne et de l'Orange, et cetera ad nauseam-- has often said that noblebirds of their class are better suited to being patrons of the arts than to being performers. I think Dr. Iwamine should put him to the test."

Nene perked up. "Your stepfather is another anatid, just like me?"

Yuuya snorted. "No no, Nenette. Not a duck. A duke. He is quite interested in promoting French culture, and perhaps the very name of our Boulin Rouge could entice him further into patronage."

The partridge considered this. "Perhaps. In fact, the Le Bel name sounds quite familiar; I may have a prior acquaintance with this duc de l'Orange. And what was your other idea?"

"I hear that we have yet another transfer student in our school. A barbarian human girl. While she may not be suited to joining our troupe herself, she could be the ideal consultant and inspiration for the new year ahead. I believe that both she and my little brother are even the same homeroom as our irresistable icon of iciness incarnate."

"Who, me?" Ryouta winced again.

"Yes, you, Coolene," Dr. Iwamine said. "Do your best to engage her as a consultant. Woo her. Win her. Play whatever role is required to lure her in, be it wilting flower, bright and bubbly, or smoldering temptress. If she can write, perhaps she can create for us a spectacularly barbarous spectacle to overwhelm our spectators' expectations."

Nene expectorated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, "Le Bel" was a byname of the historical Hapsburg duke rather than a true surname, but shush.


	4. Chapter 4

Mr. Nanaki's classroom was inexplicably decorated with red silk curtains and red velvet cushions. The preposterous furnishings receded into the background as Hiyoko stared at the grey rock dove on the cushion beside hers.

"No. No way. Are you telling me you're Coolene?"

"Um. Yes?" Ryouta said tentatively. That was the name on his school blazer-- Kawara Ryouta-- and his voice definitely sounded male.

"But... I thought Coolene was a girl. A white-feathered fantail dove girl."

Another student charged into their conversation, a loud and aggressive fantail male. "Coolene is a girl! Just as Lady Giga is a girl! But Oko San and Ryouta are not!"

"Lady Giga? What does she have to do with anything?" Hiyoko recognized that name from the Boulin Rouge's cast list, but she didn't see the relevance to this conversation. Lady Giga was a particularly voluptuous performer, often decked out with holographic peacock feathers and little blinky lights. Maybe this was one of her crazed fanbirds? Hiyoko took a closer look, preparing to defend the glacial glory of Coolene against all challengers. This male fantail classmate had the fantastically pouty chest of that breed, muscular and bulging and... oh no.

Ryouta coughed. "This is Oko San. Lady Giga Puddi, on stage. It's convenient for us doves that we don't have obvious secondary sexual characteristics. So at the Boulin Rouge, our costumes largely dictate our perceived gender framing, as part of deconstructing the traditional humanocentric patriarchy that continues to permeate our post-colonial neo-communitarian dove society."

Oko San stamped his feet. "Kick humanocentric patriarchy to the curb! Even this school is too repressive to allow us our full fabulousness in the classroom!" He broke into the unmistakeable signature performance of Lady Giga. "It doesn't matter if you can fly, or if your breed is still flightless-- just put your wings up, cause you were laid like this, baby!"

Hiyoko gently reached out, wrapped her hand around San's beak, and clamped it shut. She stared straight into Ryouta's beautiful beady eyes. "What's your real reason for doing this?"

Ryouta quailed, or at least bunched up his body into a small round bundle like a quail. "Technically, Dr. Iwamine doesn't pay us, but he lets us keep any tips they stuff into our costumes. I need the money for my school supplies and uniforms. We all do, or at least the ones who are still in school. San paid me last week to sew patches onto his jacket to cover up some holes until he can afford a new one." Indeed, the fantail's jacket had terrifyingly cute hand-sewn patches shaped like pudding, pudding, and pudding.

Heartbroken, Hiyoko shook her fist, accidentally flapping San in the air by his beak until he broke free and pecked her. She ignored him, letting her pecked hand bleed freely as she clutched her face. "I thought you were a girl, Coolene. I thought you made me gay! I thought you made me gay for birds, but instead, you're just one of Dr. Iwamine's oh so talented, charmingly impoverished, tragically bishounen performers!"

She burst into tears. Awkwardly, Ryouta patted her with his wing. "Um," he said again. "So, as I was asking before-- will you come help us write a new show?"

Hiyoko kept sobbing in despair for a few minutes more, then suddenly stopped and stared at him again. "Yes. I have an idea. We have a tribal dance in the human brothels of Buenos Aires. It tells the story of the pigeon and a human who falls in love with her. First, there is desire. Then, passion. Then, suspicion. Jealousy. Anger. Betrayal. Without trust, there can be no love, only jealousy. Yes, jealousy will drive you mad. Dating pigeons is nothing but suffering and madness!"

"I... don't think that will work for our audience," Ryouta said cautiously. "Since we are mostly birds, you know. Besides, we don't have any human performers."

"You mean you don't have any human performers yet." Hiyoko's eyes burned into his.

The classroom door opened and Mr. Nanaki belatedly stumbled in with another fantail student. "Ah, good morning, everyone. I've brought in a new transfer student from France. Please be kind to him; I'm afraid his Japanese isn't very good yet, because his older brother was supposed to be helping him learn certain phrases but has a terrible sense of humor. But if you laugh at him, his stepfather will have you extradited to France and put into an oubliette. Or was that an omelette? Anyway, I hope that all of you will welcome Shirogane Le Bel Sakuya."

Everyone bowed politely to Sakuya. Sakuya responded with only a chilly nod of his head. In cold, correct tones, he said, "If I told you that you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

Mr. Nanaki led Sakuya to an especially fluffy red velvet cushion in the middle of the classroom. "There you go, Mr. Shirogane. I hope you'll be comfortable."

Sakuya nodded again. "Drop your panties, Sir William; I cannot wait until lunchtime."

On his way back to the front of the classroom, Mr. Nanaki leaned toward Hiyoko, who had finally broken eye contact with Ryouta. "So," he whispered, "I see you've met Coolene. And Lady Giga." San was still pecking her. "How are you doing at recruiting them for our new maid café?"

"They've asked me to write something for them."

"Oh, excellent! We can lure them in with new material!" Nanaki leaned closer, confidingly. "I've often thought about writing something myself. Perhaps something like 'The hills are incarnate with symphonic melodies'?"

"If you don't mind my saying so, sir, I don't think that literature is your best subject."

"No, you're perfectly right; I should stick to my forte. Perhaps 'The hills are local maxima, where I demonstrate rotational inertia'? It even rhymes."

"Sir, maybe you should get back up to the blackboard and start homeroom."

"Yes, of course. We can talk about this later," Nanaki smiled. He made it almost all the way back to the front of the room before passing out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random phrase sources: Angie Gallant's "Let's Play" yet again and Monty Python's "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook" sketch.


	5. Chapter 5

As Hiyoko slumped over the pile of books on the library table, a young mourning dove appeared out of nowhere and eyed her disdainfully. "I hope you're going to reshelve all of those in the proper places. What are you looking for?"

She sighed. "I want to find a human-based story to adapt into a mostly-transvestite pigeon maid cabaret. A spectacularly barbaric spectacle, with subtextually acerbic social commentary, fabulous costumes, and a good beat that you can dance to. But nothing is working so far. Because of the Duc de l'Orange, I thought I'd start looking at French literature-- _Les Pigeons Dangereux_? _Notre Dinde de Paris_?"

The mourning dove shook his head. "Social satire and frocks, yes. Danceability, no."

"So then I thought about frontier epics of the American West. _Lonesome Dove_? _Tom Sawyer_?"

"Definite turkeys."

"And then back to Europe. _Warblers and Peace_? _Don Quetzale_? _The Sparrows of Young Werther_?"

"Entirely too unfabulous," the mourning dove snapped. "I used to be in an experimental avant-garde maid cabaret myself. If you want to come up with a good audiovisual spectacle, it's easiest to adapt a source that was in an audiovisual medium to begin with. Opera, ballet, cinema, that sort of thing."

"What source did your avant-garde cabaret end up using?" Hiyoko asked.

"Stravinsky's _Firebird_. It went badly. Down in flames, in fact." The mourning dove brooded briefly. "But we failed _spectacularly_ , and that was the important thing. So forget about these books. Go watch videos instead."

\---

Hiyoko came back the next day, eager to bounce more ideas off the mourning dove. "Rule number one: don't squawk about _Flight Club_."

"No frocks."

" _Hens Don't Crow_?"

"Too depressing."

" _The Last Emperor Penguin_?"

"Undanceable."

" _The Buzzard of Oz_?"

"Not socially relevant, but at least that one already has musical numbers in it. You still aren't thinking on all three levels, for heaven's sake." The mourning dove glared at her, pushing forward a slip of paper. "Here. I've listed a few examples that would already have existing orchestration. You'd just have to adapt the libretti and lyrics."

Hiyoko peered at the list. " _The Mikadove_?"

"Recursively self-referential othering, fabulous kimono opportunities, and light-hearted catchy tunes. 'Three little maids in school are we, dusting our desks on bended knee' and so on."

" _Avenue Coo_?"

"Brechtian neo-bunraku, with bird performers openly playing out human roles through hand puppets. Think of the loli-goth black frocks that the puppeteers could wear. 'You can be as loud as the hell as you want when you're mating doves'."

"Can you really operate hand puppets with bird wings?"

The mourning dove glared at her again. "Never mind."

"What's this one? _Swanny Todd_?"

\---

Nervously, Hiyoko began to pitch the plot to the assembled flock.

" _Swanny Todd: The Demon Preener of Fleet Street_. It's a scathing social critique, expanded beyond economic class restrictions by gender-flipping most of the original roles. The heroine is a swan who was forcibly migrated so her egg could be confiscated by the evil Judge Turtledove, who then raises the young male cygnet as her ward and potential mate. Years later, Swanny Todd returns in disguise to seek revenge with the help of her old acquaintance, Mrs. Polly Parrot. Swanny becomes obsessed by murderous thoughts and ends up killing many of the doves who come to her for preening; the doves can have long death arias in fabulous frocks, if necessary. To dispose of the bodies, Mrs. Parrot turns them into pigeon pot pie."

Oko San looked dubious. "Does it have a good beat that Lady Giga can dance to?"

Dr. Iwamine rose to his feet, his eyes glinting. "I don't care if it does. I like it."


End file.
